


A Means To An End

by Ark



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"As I say, I don't often find myself jealous of Sherlock. But despite your damage you're really an exquisite specimen, John Watson."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Means To An End

The dark car brings John to a posh anonymous red-brick hotel just like the dozen other hotels ringing the cobbled square. There is nothing to distinguish it or his stony-faced companions. He is brought up through the kitchen and service elevators so he never sees the lit-up name on the facade.

The suite is wholly anonymous, clean and modern without any hint of ostentation or identifiers. There's a march down a long creamy defensible hallway with white orchids in a vase on the table. A larger sitting-room with overstuffed armchairs opens up into the bedroom beyond. The door to the small balcony is thrown open to the night air.

The four-deep escort in black with silvered guns leaves John there, by the orchids. They'd screened him twice already, thoroughly enough.

“Good evening, Dr. Watson,” says Mycroft Holmes. He's mixing matching drinks at the small bar. “Thank you for accepting my invitation. Won't you have something to drink?”

It seems petulant to refuse, so John accepts the heavy glass, taking a goodwill sip that only registers the good burn of expensive blended liquors but no identifying brand. One sip is enough for the moment.

“Let's get on with this,” says John, brusque as he can make it. “I won't be providing any information on Sherlock no matter the price or the threat. We help when we can, and you track us already, he says; isn't that enough? I promise you he's kept fed and watered, healthy under my watch as his erratic habits permit, and that is really all I have to say to you, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Holmes.”

“That is good to hear you say,” Mycroft says, after his own leisurely sip, drawn longer than John's. “Though of course you are right and we are already aware. Truly, your devotion to my sibling and his 'erratic habits,' as you so graciously phrase them, is admirable. If I could have found you for his keeper years ago I would have ordered you from Afghanistan.”

John, considering that, drinks more. Nose nearly to liquor-edge. “So why was I snatched from work? What are we playing at today?” He gestures.

The empty airy suite with only Mycroft and his impeccably tailored suit and too-shiny shoes. The men with guns outside. The whole hotel probably wired to blow if the operation goes haywire.

“I thought to be of service with another sort of problem,” Mycroft says, crossing to one of the armchairs, sitting fluidly and with a long graceful flick of his wrist indicating John to its opposite. Once seated he sips again. “Concerning my dear brother.”

John sits down. Mycroft says, “It has come to our attention that you are rather -- how shall we say? -- attentive to his needs. That you would not be adverse to ministering to all of them.”

John stands back up. Only goes down again, levering slowly, when Mycroft's eyes snap sharp on him like a physical push and pin him in place.

One dark eyebrow lifts like a curved blade, seems to slice into John. “Let's not be Puritans about this, Dr. Watson. We're neither of us are. My time, not to be exaggerated about it, is quite terribly precious and I am sparing a significant block towards resolving the issue at hand.”

“It's, it's,” John tries, stuttering with it. No way to lie to the coolly calculated man across, no way to say anything untrue. No reason to when he knows everything already. How did one address a demi-god?

“It's not an issue, really. It's, it's just -- feelings.” That comes out bloody awfully. John drinks some more.

Mycroft's curving smile is more dangerous than his eyebrow. “The semantics can remain your own. It is in all of our interests to see you further invested in my brother and to have Sherlock distracted from the worst of the episodes he gets up to. I see you follow my logic. Excellent.”

He tilts John a knowing look, the steady gaze considering, gauging. “He's really rather sexual, Sherlock is, did you know, Doctor? Had a string of lovers long as he could, but none of them like you before. He's a funny one, isn't he. All of that indifference! An act picked up in an errant theatre-production he did on a whim at University. He played Puck. He finds it entertaining.”

John is aware that his jaw has vaguely dropped and shuts it. He's aware that most of his drink is nearly gone and Mycroft is reaching for a carafe nearby he hadn't spotted before and leaning forward to refresh it. John can't think of anything to possibly say in answer, so he just drinks when his glass is filled.

Luckily Mycroft keeps speaking. “In terms of you, the bravely bold Dr. Watson, Sherlock is likely worried he'll lose his new very best friend; he hasn't had many, you see. Otherwise he would have had you bent over the couch on your first visit. He prefers them flaxen-fair.”

John closes his eyes at that, definitely no Puritans here, and when he opens them, Mycroft is smiling all the more broadly from his armchair. So like his brother and not, the same brilliant features underneath strikingly different refined faces, the same shared elegant gestures and dramatic trill of speech-delivery. The same proclivity for declaring uncomfortable true statements with panache.

Sherlock seen older and wiser, with Sherlock's manic disposition tamed under weighty responsibility and shadowed hair that might curl like Sherlock's cut respectably close. Like Sherlock, but with a darker edge sometimes shown, the genetic ruthlessness Sherlock tried to outrun. Sherlock was only cruel when he had to be. This man was when he wanted to be. It was a difference John kept in front of mind.

“So, ah, erm,” John allows, around another swallow, then resting the glass on his knee, promising to slow down. “My problem. How would you go about solving it?” That's the way to trigger Holmeses.

Mycroft's eyes brighten. “I was hoping you would ask,” he answers. “It's quite simple really: I lay claim to you first, and that in turn causes Sherlock to take action after all. Which he will, if I know my brother. And I do know my brother, John.” _Dr. Watson_ has left the building.

John had been primed to hear madcap schemes involving motorbiking spies and isn't sure he's hearing right. “You,” he's able to say as Mycroft waits.

“Me,” Mycroft agrees. “There is nothing in the world that will succeed in making my brother jealous than thinking that I've had you first.”

“Thinking that,” repeats John.

Mycroft says, “All his life he's followed after me. Tried to stoop to fit my shadow. Too unbalanced for the civic exams and too erratic for MI5 or special operations, you know, despite his genius.” The full lips, like Sherlock's and not, slowly press out their smile. “But he _is_ bloody brilliant, isn't he, John? And he's done well for himself, better than I'd hoped, making friends with the Yard and you as he has. This website of his and the consulting work. He just needs one thing more to be rounded out, doesn't he, so that we needn't worry?”

John's mouth feels like a heavily-drawn line. He takes a while in reply but when he does: “Yeah,” he says, heavier. “Yes. I want him. He doesn't look at me unless he needs me for a problem.”

“There you're wrong, John. I told you I know Sherlock. He only wants for prompting.” Mycroft steeples his fingers and tilts a flickering glance, an ever-more evaluating one. “Are you willing, then?”

John scrubs a hand through short-cropped sandy hair, scratches an ear that doesn't itch. Both are grounding gestures, and yet when he blinks he's still here, still holding the glass, still sitting in an unidentifiable hotel in armchairs across from Mycroft Holmes, not dreaming.

He has another slow-burning swallow. Narrows his eyes. “You really suppose,” he starts, then stops, unable then not to see it, “That if you and me--”

“I know,” says Mycroft, with a little sigh of someone long used to knowing things.

“A rather personal intervention, don't you think,” John manages, still not unseeing it. “Quite the devoted service to Queen and Country.”

Mycroft's smile creeps ever upward. “Think of this as more of a family concern,” he says. Then he says, eyes taking John apart from tip to toe, “It would be a mutual service, I think. I am also partial to fair hair.”

John blinks his way around that. When he comes out the other end the cant of his head and his tone is more curious than accusatory. “You want this, too,” he says, realizing. “None of it's much about me, is it? All part of whatever game you've got on with Sherlock. I'm just a pawn.”

“Don't be foolish, John.” Mycroft sniffs. “You're at least a knight or a bishop. A knight, I think.” He has another considering draw of his drink. “But you're not entirely incorrect. I don't like to repeat myself: it would be a mutual service.”

John shakes his head. “You really want to pull me before he does -- you've thought about this,” he says. He can deduct things, too. The whole surreal room and set-up swings even more surreal. “Why? Why me?”

“Because I can,” says Mycroft. “Because he won't until I do.”

“But me,” John protests.

“Because he desires you, but wants for prodding. Must I get into the habit of repeating myself all night, John?” Even relaxed in his chair, Mycroft's tall folded frame seems primed for action, kinetic energy kept tightly coiled.

He reminds John of a tiger stalking in a too-small cage -- somehow does that by sitting there with his leg crossed easily at the knee and the way he holds his glass.

“Okay, okay,” John says. “Okay. Yes.”

He slings back what's left of his own drink in one go, and that hangs in the air between them for a beat.

Then, “Very good,” says Mycroft, his smile resurfacing. “I rather thought so.”

“You hoped,” John returns, testing a lighter tone.

Mycroft doesn't say anything to that -- just launches at last from the chair as though propelled by an engine, his sure grip settling on John's shoulder. “Come now,” he says, when they're moving toward the bedroom. “This has been quite enough foreplay. You can just lie back, John--”

“And think of England?” John says roughly, grasping after sarcasm to overlay the doubled mix of uncertainty and uncertain arousal.

“Think of whatever you like,” Mycroft says, already starting to divest John of his clothing with stunning efficiency, as though the maneuvers had been pre-plotted. “Just stay down and keep up.”

His inquisitive hands on John are appreciative but do not linger. Evaluating, of course, charting and mapping and noting all the new unseen things about John. There'll be a lot to add to John's file after tonight.

Mycroft has his suit jacket off and draped neatly over the bedroom's wingback chair. He rolls up both dress-sleeves, neat, perfectly symmetrical rolls, ending just above his elbows, like there's hard work about. He even undoes a single button and his tie while John watches him pull free the loops, laying it parallel to the jacket.

John thinks it's probably the closest Mycroft Holmes gets to looking as though he's doing manual labor, which, John thinks, he supposes that he is.

Then Mycroft steps nimbly back into John's personal space bubble. John is already bare to the waist, his own shirt and coat having been more callously disposed of. Mycroft's direct gaze is unnervingly intense as his expert fingers slip loose John's belt and toss that, too.

Mycroft's hand then busy with John's snap and zipper and boxers and underneath. He doesn't exactly smirk to find John half-hard with the outrageous irrationality and rationality of it, the sense not of doing wrong but doing something they _shouldn't_.

It's as intoxicating as the drink, and John focuses on breathing _fuck this is really happening really actually going to happen really_ and Mycroft, portrait-perfectly calm, doesn't seem to need to breathe, just closes that expert hand expertly around John's cock.

“This is the last time I'm going to repeat myself tonight, John,” Mycroft says, his words less BBC-presenter crisp in address but no less serious. “Lie back and stay down.”

John sits on the edge of the bed. Kicks off shoes and socks, lets Mycroft tug and pull the cover of his jeans and boxers away. Scoots up and drops back naked as told, hating commands but uncertain how to quantify this one, his head on a soft pillow with a thread-count higher than all at Baker Street's combined.

Baker Street, where Sherlock is probably reading, or has eighty-seven tabs open in a browser on the internet, or is lying on the couch in the dark unaware that in an anonymous hotel across the city John is lying down for his brother.

John flinches, a little, when the main light goes off, leaving only the glow from the room beyond to illuminate them, but slowly his eyes adjust. Silhouetted in the near-dark, Mycroft's strong tall frame, still elegantly arrayed, speaks of Sherlock.

Though they are not so alike in looks as some siblings, the resemblance in poise and presentation is at times uncanny. Would Sherlock order John as such, want to seize him in the dark?

Mycroft is touching John, his hands sweeping from neck to knee, from shoulder down to fingertips, a teasing squeeze and turn again on John's cock and then away, to measure the distance from thigh to toe with hand-spans alone. He trails the bottom of John's feet, uses two fingers to trace out the the V of his hip-bones, tests intricate circles against his scalp.

Mycroft misses nothing, skirting the scars on purpose, smoothing instead the firm muscle of John's abdomen, returned nearly to fighting strength after so many days spent running after Sherlock.

He quiets his hands at last, keeping one only on the upper leg John had favored -- better now, so much better, but its tendons still a little tight with all the time John had kept it twisted.

“My,” says Mycroft, breaking the silence that had strung the touching, his voice lower but no less clear, “You know I don't often envy my little brother. Worry about him, of course. Awfully, I assure you. So many years better left forgotten...” The hand not on John's hip goes back to his cock, fixing at the base, then starting to twist up and down and up and down tight tighter up and down and up and John's hips nearly go with it until he remembers to stay down and somehow manages. John bites his lip, sharp flash of pain, not ready to give a reaction beyond his body's yet.

Mycroft still has one hand on John's newly unwounded leg and one moving on his now hard-as-hell cock with adept pressure. “As I say, I don't often find myself jealous of Sherlock. But despite your damage you're really an exquisite specimen, John Watson.”

John still says nothing; could say nothing to that anyway; it's good that Mycroft's a talker, he thinks, isn't it? He doesn't know if Sherlock would be in bed.

Two options: one, there would be (nearly) absolutely no way to shut Sherlock up; two, that Sherlock went silent and introspective during sex, held sounds in unless wrenched free. Held sounds in like John's holding down his moan now, unwilling to give Mycroft and his filthily immaculate abilities a triumph so soon. Unable to explain all the reasons why he's responding to this more deeply than any strange one-night stand he's stumbled into.

 _Three options, maybe: Sherlock was both ways, Sherlock made both wild noises and kept himself heart-stoppingly quiet no matter what was done to him._

Mycroft continues as though John's asked for a full prognosis. “Well-made, you are, solid to the bone; a little short for a soldier, but they took you because they needed doctors and because you were better than some of the career Forces in training, weren't you, John. I've seen the files -- the commendations before your incident.”

The hand not trying to pull moans free from John travels up his side to hook under his chin. “Such a good earnest face, too, look at that, when you're poised to appreciate it -- the very sort to want to bring home to Mummy. Your hair with just enough gold. Do you know, it was your eyes and your hair that first brought this thought to mind. The superb cock is quite the unexpected bonus.”

John flushes in the half-dark but tosses his head to stay soundless. Mycroft says, “I thought he would want you from the first, knew when they first handed me the picture of you; it only took for some time and confirmation. Then I couldn't have you for myself, now could I -- no other way than this small arrangement, of course. Hence, I find myself a little envious of my brother's good fortune. I do not begrudge him it; I willingly help bring it about. But I think I will make you remember me.”

John watches as Mycroft's gripping hand shifts down to press against his balls and Mycroft's head moves low, low. John can see from this angle that there is indeed a curl, a decided wave, to his dark hair.

He swallows John to the root in a singular motion of practiced grace and surety, cock-sucking rendered like a fine art they gave A-levels for.

Mycroft Holmes had never not earned an A-level or a double first-class at anything he'd attempted in his lifetime. It was against his nature to be anything less than consummately flawless as the situation demanded.

He seems keen to demonstrate this burnished skill set: wet warm hot hotter tight suction everywhere on John, claiming all of him, already starting to set a more-than-moan-inducing pace. The brazenly evident relish Mycroft displays making John somehow hotter, letting him somehow push further without letting his hips too far off the bed.

“Ah -- god,” John says at last, the first thing he's said in ages. “Yes. Like that.”

So that goes on for a good while longer. John can practically feel Mycroft smile around his cock at the speech, and his tongue is a sneaky twisting weight that knows far too much about anatomy.

John sounds the tight-bottled moan at last, when Mycroft pulls back to lick and tease and suck the tip alone, his fingers curling back around, hard and fast-moving, in recompense for wet heat.

“There,” says Mycroft, not going far so that the words are mouthed against John's skin, “Not so very hard to crack after all. Just lovely. Now we can begin in earnest, John.”

John opens his mouth to find more words but finds that there are none to be uncovered. There are only increasingly higher-pitched noises and inarticulate pleas that surprise him immensely when he realizes that he's the one giving them voice.

* * *

There's only the one thing. Later, panting, tight-twisted in the dark, with Mycroft's long smart fingers in deep, working more out of John than John had imagined workable --

“I can't have you fuck me,” John says, the most syllables he's pieced together for a time. “Only just not like that.” His head is buried in the sweat-damp pillow, his body rewired to haywire, overloaded and on overdrive.

“How virtuous, John,” says Mycroft, and the briefest furrow between his eyebrows suggests that for a moment he wants to disagree with the edict; but in the next breath he goes on to show the ways in which fucking could still be quite accomplished without the traditional anatomy.

* * *

His name is John. Also Dr. Watson. He's a doctor. A doctor in the army. Was that. Problems there. Still a doctor though.

Now he chases after his half-mad fully brilliant flatmate solving crimes, keeping his flatmate safe. Only it's bigger than all of that. They're caught in events even crazier than they are, things that involve monarchs and presidents and governments, sometimes, and the police pounding at their door.

Their door, at 221b Baker Street, London, where he Dr. John Watson shares a flat with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, whose idiosyncrasies have become as beloved as they are eccentric, whose face is the one John wants to see when he closes his eyes at night past dreaming.

John pieces himself back together, the rise and fall of his chest shallow, counting out his pulse in heartbeats and trying to slow it down. Orgasm had ripped through him at last, when proffered, shattering him with needed release, with relief needed so badly it frightened him to feel it.

He'd come with his cock back in Mycroft's mouth and Mycroft's perfectly timed swallow taking him down, Mycroft's fist locked on him, John's eyes closed.

Mycroft had asked nothing more, taken nothing else, only left John to lie along the bed, polished clean and collapsed. Mycroft with only two more buttons open at the neck of his dress-shirt, though sweat marks it in thin streaks against the pale yellow. Even Mycroft Holmes sweats, John thinks when he can think again.

Mycroft clearly and impressively turned on against the impeccably tailored cut of his suit-pants. Ignoring it. This is not part of it, thinks John, grateful because he can barely lift his head, let alone offer to properly reciprocate.

Mycroft stretches out on the far side of the bed, graceful limbs settling inattentive of their basest desires, as though no pants-seams are being strained. He props a fresh pillow behind his head. He crosses his legs at the ankles, and John sees then that he's still wearing expensive, practical, shiny shoes, bound up by black laces.

When he speaks his voice is wholly flat; it is only in his expressive eyes that John sees mischievous humor and unhurried satisfaction. Mycroft has got what he wanted, then, so --

“This is how it will go,” he begins, laying it all out; unfolding Sherlock for John; and after that they part with little more or less said between them, though there is a solid handshake when John goes to leave, and the expressed wish from Mycroft that he have good luck.

* * *

When John gets back to Baker Street Sherlock is sprawled in the big armchair, legs askew, his head propped in one hand, staring stolidly out the window. It's late, but not indiscreetly late, and John takes the Tube home from the underground station the dark car drops him at across town.

Sherlock's pose is eerily reminiscent of others in armchairs a few hours ago, so John is glad he's able to follow set instructions and march straight on past Sherlock into the kitchen.

He puts the silver pint-cans of beer into the fridge and when he straightens from it Sherlock has swiveled to look at him, legs tucking up, crowding the chair. Zero to sixty from thinking-stupor to full implacable awareness in half a minute.

“John,” says Sherlock evenly, “What've you been up to, then?”

It's an immense effort not to smile, but John cracks the beer in his hand instead. Takes a refreshingly long drink and wipes the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Out. Couldn't you figure?”

He sets the can down long enough to unzip his jacket, pacing past Sherlock again to hang it on the door-peg; then he goes back to the beer. He knows Sherlock is reading pages into every wrinkle of John's shirt. John leans his hip into the counter and keeps drinking like it's a Saturday night and he's come home as per usual. Like Sherlock isn't wide-eyed in the living room, his own mouth unreadable.

“John,” says Sherlock, “Will you come here a moment, please?”

“Well,” John considers, “Since you asked so nicely,” and he pushes off from the counter and moves to stand by the side of the chair. Sherlock's eyes are flicking this way and that, partitioning him, John knows, trying to make sense of the varied signals.

John tilts him the beer can in offering. “Would you like a bit? No?” He shrugs, the casual movement to keep him casual. “Cheers,” and he knocks back another heady pull.

“John,” says Sherlock, for the third time, like a summoner in a story. “Tell me why you smell like him.”

Sherlock's eyes are very blue and very, very round in accompaniment to his words. His eyes bore holes.

John scratches the back of his neck. “Who's that?”

Sherlock's full lips disappearing into an emboldened line. “John.”

“Oh,” John says, like he's just remembered. “You mean Mycroft. Ran into him, I did, did I forget to mention?”

“It is singularly impossible to do such a thing,” Sherlock says, his voice tuning lower, as though a dial has been spun. He's up and on his feet far too quickly for the slothful pose he'd held, crowding John's space, reaching for his collar, tugging there. “Jesus, John. I have to—No, let me--”

John blinks, putting up his hands with beer can between, but Sherlock's fingers are scrabbling at his shirt, tearing at it, tearing it loose with a firm disregard for buttons. For the second time in an evening John's shirt hangs abused. “Sherlock. What--”

“You _reek_ of him,” Sherlock says, Roman nose flaring. “God, it's like he's _marked_ you. Did he _mark_ you, John?” His hands tear harder at the cloth over John's chest. “Did he _really_?”

John tugs shirt-ends together as though he's proper modest. “I don't think that's any of your damned business,” he says, which is mostly still on-script. He adds the “damned” -- what did Sherlock think he was about, acting like John couldn't be a red-blooded adult on his own, when he'd made no claims, no claims whatsoever --

Sherlock's upper lip actually becomes what John would term for his blog a snarl. “Here you have never been more wrong,” he says. Only the briefest flash of furious blue eyes gone storm-grey and he storms out of the flat without coat, slamming the door so hard detritus is knocked free from the bookshelves.

He's back in the time it takes to go down the stairs and come back up again, taking them two at a time on long legs.

Slams the door open to find John still standing by the chair, staring at the entranceway, the beer forgotten in his hand.

Sherlock's across the room as quickly and he has his arms around him. They crush John close, one fitting his waist, the other grabbing for his shoulder, then looping it; he pulls John in as far as he'll go.

John's face turns up and he knows his eyes are too bright, and Sherlock kisses him in another sort of crush, this one lip to lip, mouth to mouth, unexpected clash of teeth. The silver can falls and hits wood and spins, spilling.

Settled after that, smoother, decided, equally desired, a deeper kind of kiss that dips John backward and presses him to the line of armchair. Sherlock's tongue in his mouth, clever and exploratory, discovering a place in John where none of Mycroft's scent lingers.

Knows that, uncovers that, teases John's tongue too while learning the shape of his teeth and deconstructing his taste. _The peppermint toothpaste from this morning. Coffee. Egg sandwich. Coffee with cream. Chips for lunch. Coca-cola. Bubblegum. Four kinds of alcohol, blended. Beer. Then the unique first sampling of what was John alone, John's mouth deciphered and unhindered by any flavor save John._

They say nothing, only communicate with the physical signals they've learned and honed. Sherlock everywhere around him, towering down from what seem like dizzying heights to John's increasingly oxygen-depleted brain.

Sherlock's whipcord frame molding in close without hesitation like this was something they'd done before, like they've done it all along. Like this is what they've always been. His arms clasp and hold harder and already they're angled in such a way that their mutual reaction is impossible to misinterpret.

All that is ethereal about Sherlock banished, made suddenly ready, willing flesh, the flush of blood across his cheekbones and lips proving that he could be given color after all. His black hair falling over his forehead in disarray, raked even wilder from where his hands had tugged through it at the bottom of the staircase, before he'd turned back around to the flat and John.

He has John's lower lip fit between his teeth and then more gently tests his tongue again, pushing into John's open waiting mouth. They kiss for a long time. Days maybe.

Sherlock the one who finally leans away, but not without dragging at John's lip as he goes. John hoping he looks pleased and stunned like he hopes. Sherlock's reaching behind him now for his coat and phone on the chair, loosing his hold on John.

He kisses him once more before departing again; this one fluttering, in passing, a bird's wing brush to John's mouth after Sherlock's scarf is tied.

Almost a kiss that could have passed before, before the other one. John thinks that his life will be bifurcated like this from now and, before and after the kiss with the armchair and Sherlock digging hard into his thigh.

Sherlock's gaze entreats him not to follow more effectively than words can. He levels him with a stare, ghosts his lips against John's, leaving John to think about birds' wings, and goes back out to search for a man singularly impossible to run into.

* * *

It's late, much too late, when Sherlock finally comes back. John is dozing across half of the couch, a blanket drawn partially up. He'd tried not to let himself get too comfortable, not wanting to fall asleep.

Sherlock quietly takes off his coat in the bare single lamp John's left on and slips onto the couch into the space remaining, kicking free of his shoes.

His settling weight and heavier sigh shift John, who blinks fast into full awareness. For infinite terrible moments John is afraid that they'll go back to it; that Sherlock has walked off jealousy into dull reason, forced desire away again, where it belongs in a parallel world apart from the greater work that drives him forward.

Sherlock's hand touches John's foot, the one closest. Cradles the heel in his palm. Smooths his sock. “You're awake,” he says. It isn't a question.

John feels less afraid then, brave even, so he turns to lie flat on the couch and kicks out his legs. Sherlock, upended, takes the right hint for once and crawls up over John. After considerable narrow blue-eyed lip-pursed calculation he folds himself in and down. Their bodies sink together like they're on water.

“It doesn't matter,” John says, whispery. “It was just a means to an end. What would you do if Mycroft even wanted to be found?”

Sherlock's lips are close to John's ear. “Kill him, first.”

John's eyebrow goes up, and he laughs, indulgent, liking that when his chest swells with it Sherlock is close above him, pressing down, feeling every vibration of John's laughter. Sherlock says, “Second, lock him in a room with only American country-western music and _Coronation Street_ playing on loop for endless days. Third--”

“Already a fate worse than death,” John concurs. “But Sherlock--”

“John. No matter what he told you, it isn't true. I mean it isn't precisely true. I don't want you merely because he's had the temerity to go after you first.”

“I'd -- ah -- hoped as much,” John says. It's possibly the strangest conversation he's ever had -- horizontal with Sherlock atop him and against him, covering him, ever trying to figure him -- even stranger than the ones that passed earlier in a hotel he'll never know the name of. “Anyway, he didn't imply that, quite.”

“Quite,” says Sherlock. “Quite. This is very different than the games my brother and I usually play. This is different.”

“Do go on,” from John. “Since I'm a bit involved this go.”

With his lips to John's ear and neck Sherlock's voice is at first hesitant, then picks up speed, like a train gathering itself from a station. “The way I -- how I felt about you, John, confused me after I first diagnosed it. I could make little headway. I found that I would think of you frequently, and wonder after your safety, even if logically I knew you to be somewhere perfectly safe. Even if you were _with_ me. If you did not return my texts within a set space of time I itched to call Lestrade. Had him on standby until he said I couldn't anymore. I bought a can of _beans_ from a High Street shop because I thought you'd like them. I couldn't sleep until I knew you to be in bed, but when I slept you were often waiting for me there. I memorized your schedule; the whole of your mobile and email contact-list; traced your genealogy twelve generations; I know your shoe-size and your inseam and the breadth between your thumb and pinky and I could paint a picture composed only of your favorite colors. I feared that I had gone mad at last; it was all I could think to account for it. It's a state I've dabbled in before, you see, madness, and I thought I recognized some creeping signs. I went to Mycroft and told him all. He's my brother, yes, but he also has a duty to lock me up if I become a danger to others -- because of the damage I could do, John, fully mad. I've always trusted Mycroft to gauge that at least.”

The emotions warring on John's face aren't sure if they want to produce a smile or push tears into the corners of his eyes. “And Mycroft's prescription?”

Sherlock is quiet for a long time -- so long that John begins to wonder if he's slipped from Sherlockian extremes, from over-talkative to sealed-away introspection and that's all he'll get for now. He'll take it if it means Sherlock won't soon move to untwine his long body from John's.

“He called me a silly git,” Sherlock says, and when he speaks on the words are slow as honey, sweeter still to John. “He told me I was in _love_ with you, John Watson, that the crazed symptoms I had pronounced were love exactly. He said it was about bloody fucking time, suggested I take you for a romantic walk to the Tower to see the ravens, where I could talk more easily amongst the history of decapitated heads, and then he kicked me out of his office for delaying some pressing business in Northern Africa.”

John wants to laugh again but can't, not yet. “But you didn't,” he says, more cutting than he means to. The ache and uncertainties of the past few months are hard to disregard, even with Sherlock saying things that squeeze his heart in a pleasantly wrenching sort of vice-grip. “No walk. No ravens.”

 _There'd been one night at least, apart from all the subtle and unsubtle looks they knew and didn't know they traded, the banter and the standing-too-close-together; a night with John reeling a little from a spontaneous pub crawl with Mike Stamford and when he'd gotten back home he'd paused by the open living room door where Sherlock was sorting articles at the coffeetable._

 _“Right,” John had said, “I'm to bed,” and Sherlock had looked up and looked at him and John's eyes had said_ and you would be made very welcome there _and Sherlock's eyes said_ yes John quite so _and his hands had frozen on the newsprint a moment; then he'd quietly bid John good-night._

“No,” Sherlock agrees. “I didn't. I found I could not. You were too valuable to me, too indispensable. If I already had to quash panic when you ran down a blind alleyway, what better good would it have done to deepen that? Then I began to read in you that my interest was returned -- or that you had an interest entirely of your own making, thrilling -- a temptation like the Devil himself every day -- and one I forced myself to put aside. Please believe me when I say it was never easy.”

“Mycroft told me,” John starts, still somewhat put-out at being in the dark for so long, “He told me your -- your -- that all of that sexual indifference is an act, not a state of being. That you've had lovers -- 'a string,' he said. I don't understand why you didn't just say -- or -- come to bed --”

“Because you're different, John. I see I must keep repeating myself, though I find it wearying.” Sherlock's sigh is hot exhaled exasperation against John's skin. John hides a quirk of a smile before he continues. “Lovers, yes, of course. Since I was of age people have shown interest in me and occasionally I am sufficiently intrigued. Quickly bored, but not so much of an android as I let others assume, certainly. One can hardly hope to understand base human instinct without engaging in its many forms.”

John's pulse seems to have found a beat that sounds like _thud_. “You were afraid you'd get bored of me,” he says, soft. “And then I'd leave; probably stop helping you with cases, where you really need me.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says. “And very much no. I loathed the prospect of losing you for a partner in consultation; you have indeed proved invaluable, John. But you are incorrect in the first. I was afraid instead that I would never grow bored with you.”

John's heart speeds up again. “Ah, Sherlock,” he says, turning a little so he can face him, so there's no doubt about it, “That's a good thing.”

“Terrifying,” Sherlock declares. “Paralyzing. All-consuming,”

and John says, “I love you, too,”

and this time he's the one who kisses Sherlock, claims his mouth to show how John can kiss when he has time to think about it, which is extremely well and due years of energetic practice. Threads fingers through Sherlock's silk-soft hair, puts the whole strength of his hand to the back of Sherlock's neck, sucks down all of his air and Sherlock's tongue besides and won't let him up again.

When John deigns to stop kissing though he doesn't want to ever really they're both breathing hard and squirming, hard, two bodies already too much for one old sofa but trying to fit together on it.

Sherlock says, “You see why, John, though this was unspoken between us, I reacted as I did. With my brother the matter of you had not gone unspoken. He was the first to tell me what afflicted -- I mean to say, to explain that I had found myself past attached to you rather than lost my mind. But Mycroft has always been bold, and done what he pleases; it might surprise you that he has far less scruples than I.”

 _No,_ thinks John, _that would not surprise me._ Sherlock says, “A long time ago I told myself I would never let him catch me out again in surprise, and I have done well enough at it. Then he sends you to me with his scent painted across you like an obscene calling card.”

“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” John quotes, astonishing a smile from Sherlock, whose features had fast been shading surly. John glad that his few spare lines of school-retained Shakespeare include the Puckish part Sherlock had once played. The Fairy-king's mischievous, brilliant trickster, smarter than the rest, floating above the human fray but ever mucking about in it. It's no wonder he hadn't dropped the act.

A _shrewd and knavish sprite_ , the internet will tell John, later.

“Thou speak'st aright,” Sherlock responds, a sudden glitter to his eye as though he missed the stage. “I am that merry wanderer of the night,” and John's fingers come up, and they touch Sherlock's lips and the poetry there; then he returns with Sherlock somewhat calmed to trickier topics.

Revisits earlier scenes and thinks he manages to keep the blood from showing on his face. “If it helps,” John says, “I think Mycroft arranged this because he...cares, in his way, Sherlock. I'm not saying your relationship isn't awfully beyond fuckupsville and I'd recommend intensive family therapy immediately as your doctor, but he didn't do this to hurt you. Or me, for that matter. I think he decided to drastically intervene for the good of the cause -- which would seem to be his general mode of operation.”

Sherlock harrumphs in the dim light, but John's hands are gliding down his back, his fingers stopping to see how far they can span Sherlock's waist, then down over to settle over his truly excellent buttocks. Sherlock squirms some more and says, “If you're suggesting I should _thank_ him--”

“Maybe one day we will,” John says, but then he's kissing and being kissed again.

A long while later the phone goes off in Sherlock's pocket with a buzz and the slightest flicker of light from the screen through fabric. “Don't,” says John, gasping still from the precise marks Sherlock has been sucking into his neck in what John suspects are either complex geometric patterns or unproven proofs.

But Sherlock has the mobile out and in his hand, glancing down. Then with a spectacular wind-up of his powerful arm he hurls it toward the far wall. There's a brief explosion of glass and plastic and metal and wiring, a dent to the wallpaper, then silence.

“It said,” Sherlock says, breathing harder than John, before John can bring himself to ask, “It said, ' _Simply delicious. Do enjoy._ '” John almost wants to laugh or try a smile at least, but Sherlock's expression is still mixed-wild above him, too many emotions. He grips John's shoulders. “John. Did he--”

“No,” John cuts in. He can't tell if the curl of his lip looks smirking or sarcastic. “I insisted on leaving some girlish virtue intact.” His eyes meet Sherlock's, dark blue to blue that never ceased to change its colors in the light. “What I did was for you,” he goes on, normal-voiced, if they're saying as much. It's a simple sentence but not so simple.

Sherlock licks a lighter kiss to John's mouth -- far less bruising than what they've been engaging in -- and a variation this time because he only uses his tongue.

“John,” he says, serious, gaze showing serious beneath comically tousled hair, “In the morning, in a few hours, you are going to tell me exactly what transpired, so that I might go over said data, ensure its complete erasure, and provide you with an entirely different set.”

“A good plan,” John approves. “In the morning?” He's exhausted, strung-out, worn-out six ways from Sunday, even more emotionally wrought; but he's hard too and has Sherlock's lithe longed-for form shifting friction against him at last, better than any dream.

“Yes,” says Sherlock, expression settling, more ingeniously crafty and familiar than conflicted. “Because now we are going to the bath, where I intend to spend quite a good while uncovering a body that has too long tormented me; and then we will bathe -- I know you like it hot the way I do, John, I see the steam you leave behind on the mirror -- and I will wash every inch of you that there is; I will not miss the webbing between a single toe; and then when we are dry I intend to rub you first with clove oil, erotic, you know, and then with a certain lavender lotion which I admit is my favorite. I will be extremely thorough, I assure you.”

“I,” says John, blinking through the pronouncement and its attendant visions, “Okay then. That's good too.”

“After that I'm going to fuck you, John Watson,” says Sherlock Holmes, “For most of the day and on into suppertime.”

John swallows so that his voice doesn't break. “Also -- also good.”

“I think that I will fuck you perhaps until you beg me to desist; but my hypothesis is that you will not do so, and I am keen to test it -- are you not, John? Thus, the phone.”

“The phone,” John repeats, damning the word for being so close in sound to _moan_.

“Why, yes, the phone. Dramatic, I'll admit, but I didn't like the way that one texted anyway, impertinently, and I quite intend to let nothing whatsoever interrupt us. A Sunday without technology. Only sex. Very biblical.”

“You'd make the Luddites proud,” John says, pushing upwards with approval. “But it's going to be hell to get you another mobile after the last four.”

“Worth it,” says Sherlock.

Anything was, for this, for this at last beyond all ventured hopes and buried expectations. John, nodding, turns a kiss to the inside of Sherlock's wrist as he starts to pull up and away.

“I won't be begging,” John states for the record.

“I know,” Sherlock answers, face alight. “There's still more of you to figure through than in all my dossiers of criminal masterminds. Won't we have a time of it?” His fingertips run up the line of John's lips and cheek, reading their curves as though for confirmation; then Sherlock divides the warmth of them by standing and leaving the room.

Not so far this time, though: John is smiling below contentedly half-closed eyelids, and it becomes a real grin when he hears the creak of the old pipes in the walls, Sherlock drawing the water in the bath extra-hot for them both.  



End file.
